Artist’s Statement

The zippered leather heads of Nancy Grossman, the 100 Boots of Eleanor Antin, and the UFO series by Herman Mhire all had a strong visual influence on me in the 70’s. But it was Judy Chicago’s suggestion to “draw yourself as you see yourself, as the world sees you and as you would like to be seen” that generated The Bubble Blower in 1976, about a breast that inverted its nipple and became a bubble blower. That was the beginning of a personal journey in art, from drawing into painting and mixed media sculpture of subconscious imagery brought into a conscious myth dealing with the pain, the fears, and the absurdity of being human. The lack of hierarchy in materials, the use of narrative content, conceptualizing emotion, the body as metaphor, the personal as universal, were all gifts to me from the feminist movement of the 70’s. I believe that art can come from inside the artist, an authentic expression of the self, and the connection to being human. At age 33, I had found my visual voice, wanting to do in art what writers had done for me, by sharing their human struggles, like Joanne Greenberg in I Never Promised you a Rose Garden and Tennessee Williams in an interview with Edward R. Murrow…

“Let us not deny all the dark things of the human heart, but let us try to cast a clear light on them in our work.” In 1996, the nipple came out, and The Resurrection of the Bubble Blower began.